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The Book on the Bookshelf
Get Free Ebook The Book on the Bookshelf
Just how is your time to invest the leisure time in this day? Are you starting to do a brand-new task? Will you try to check out? Everyone knows as well as concurs that reading is a great habit. You must read and review, additionally guide with numerous benefits. However, is that true? There are only few people who enjoy to check out. If you are among them, it is great for you. We will certainly offer you a brand-new publication that can make your life boosted to be better.
When reading the title, you can see how the author is very reliable in using the words to create sentences. It will be also the ways how the author creates the diction to influence many people. But, it's not nonsense, it is something. Something that will lead you is thought to be better. Something that will make your feel so better. And something that will give you new things. This is it, the The Book On The Bookshelf
And just how this book will influence you to do far better future? It will relate to how the visitors will certainly obtain the lessons that are coming. As understood, frequently lots of people will certainly believe that reading can be an entryway to get in the brand-new perception. The assumption will influence how you step you life. Also that is hard sufficient; people with high sprit might not really feel bored or give up recognizing that concept. It's what The Book On The Bookshelf will certainly offer the ideas for you.
Consequently, you could take The Book On The Bookshelf as one of your analysis materials today. Even you still have the various other publication; you could establish your desire to really get this significant book. It will certainly constantly provide advantages from some sides. Reading this kind of book likewise will certainly guide you to have even more experiences that have not.
Amazon.com Review
Consider the book. Though Goodnight Moon and Finnegans Wake differ considerably in content and intended audience, they do share some basic characteristics. They have pages, they're roughly the same shape, and whether in a bookstore, library, or private home, they are generally stored vertically on shelves. Indeed, this is so much the norm that in these days of high-tech printing presses and chain bookstores, it's easy to believe that the book, like the cockroach, remains much the same as it ever was. But as Henry Petroski makes abundantly clear in Book on the Bookshelf, books as we know them have had a long and complex evolution. Indeed, he takes us from the scroll to the codex to the hand-lettered illuminated texts that were so rare and valuable they were chained to lecterns to prevent theft. Along the way he provides plenty of amusing anecdotes about libraries (according to one possibly apocryphal account, the library at Alexandria borrowed the works of the great Greek authors from Athens, had them copied, and then sent the copies back, keeping the originals), book collectors, and the care of books. Book-lover though he may be, however, Henry Petroski is, first and foremost, an engineer and so, in the end, it is the evolution of bookshelves even more than of books that fascinates him. Pigeonholes for scrolls, book presses containing thousands of chained volumes, rotating lecterns that allowed scholars to peruse more than one book at a time--these are just a few of the ingenious methods readers have devised over the centuries for storing their books: "in cabinets beneath the desks, on shelves in front of them, in triangular attic-like spaces formed under the back-to-back sloped surfaces of desktops or small tabletop lecterns that rested upon a horizontal surface." Placing books vertically on shelves, spines facing outward, is a fairly recent invention, it would seem. Well written as it is, if Book on the Bookshelf were only about books-as-furniture, it would have little appeal to the general reader. Petroski, however, uses this treatise on design to examine the very human motivations that lie behind it. From the example of Samuel Pepys, who refused to have more titles than his library could hold (about 3,000), to an appendix detailing all the ways people organize their collections (by sentimental value, by size, by color, and by price, to name a few of the more unconventional methods), Petroski peppers his account with enough human interest to keep his audience reading from cover to cover. --Alix Wilber
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From Publishers Weekly
That bookshelves might harbor secret and enchanting lives is a thrilling prospect for any serious reader. What laws of human nature govern our sturdy cases of books? What damning quirks of character glare from a few casually stowed volumes? In this disappointing study, however, Petroski's effort to reveal the "evolution of the bookshelf as we know it" yields few rewards. Pondering the physics of the bookend and the genealogy of the library carrel, this Duke University scholar observes the bookshelf as a piece of the infrastructure undergirding our civilization. We learn that medieval books were chained to their shelves to prevent theft, and that beverage stains have plagued bibliophiles almost since the dawn of the printed word. Admirers of Petroski's earlier works (The Evolution of Useful Things, Remaking the World, etc.) will not be surprised by his exquisite research, or by the gusto with which he plunges into the dustiest of library bins. But the bookshelf proves a more oblique topic than bridges or even pencils, two of Petroski's other interests. The practical construction principles of bookshelves make for rather dull reading, and conjecture about lectern usage in the Middle Ages wears thin. This book is most successful when delving into the gritty aspects of engineering, whether it be the cantilevered forces of library book stacks or the architecture of the British Museum Reading Room. After lingering among such fusty stacks, readers will welcome the whimsical appendix, which proposes arranging one's books alphabetically by the author's first name, or even by the first word of the antepenultimate sentence. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Product details
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (September 14, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375406492
ISBN-13: 978-0375406492
Product Dimensions:
6 x 1.2 x 9.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.2 out of 5 stars
33 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#300,239 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
It's a good book. I've designed a number of complex built-in bookcases, own a sizeable hone library with aspirations, and this book fits in nicely among other books about the history of books and libraries while covering some new ground.One thing I didn't quite get is the introduction where he talks about a friend of his but doesn't say who it is--is he being silly or did the person not want to be named? I just couldn't decide but he makes it pretty clear who the person is.Anyway if you're interested in this topic, it's worth the time and space on the shelf.
I'm a book collector and reader, and had always taken the shelves on which they stand for grated. This interesting book tells me how my bookshelves got the way they are and perhaps what the future will bring. Ironically, I read this on my iPad so it doesn't need a space on a shelf, but I generally prefer the tactile look, feel and smell of a bound book, so shelves and their history will remain in my house.
Who thinks of bookshelves? No one, unless you need to shelve some books, and even then it seems `pretty obvious'. Well, think again. Henry Petroski, a professor of both Civil Engineering and History at Duke University, has written an amazing study of the booksehelf.Did you know that for much of history, books were shelved spine in, instead of spine outwards? Did you know that many libraries have tall, slender widows-for a reason? Did you know that some libraries, the buildings themselves, are held up by their bookshelves?Did you know that libraries are built much stronger than most buildings, because the weight of the books would destroy `normal' buildings? One of the reason the Pentagon survived the 9/11 crash so well was that is was designed to be a library/records retention facility, instead of an office building.This and other interesting information can be found in "The Book on the Bookshelf". Much of the information is not well known, even by librarians. For example, in Clearwater, Florida, they had to remove most of their books from the main library a few years ago when a visitor (a civil engineer) noticed that they had converted a department store to a library. He calculated that the weight of the books on the upper floors should have collapsed the building. They investigated and found large cracks! They quickly removed most of the books, and set about designing a new library.After reading this volume, you will never look at a library, bookshelf, or even a book the same way again. I have read this book several times, and find new meaning and information each time. Probably his best work. Highly recommended.
We tend not to think about things like the bookshelf. It's history and function. And the book on it. Weren't books always shelved the way they are now? Spine out, on a horizontal shelf next to others placed vertically?Well, no. Petroski takes the reader on a an adventure through the reading history of the West, explaining the birth of books and what they were set upon. Numerous illustrations take us from the codex to the chained book to the printed book. From horizontal stacking to front cover out to spine in to spine out.Truly an intriguing romp for bibliophiles and historians. A must for anybody in library science. Well-cited, though with that new style of endnotes that makes me gag. A bib and index, along with an appendix on shelving systems. An endlessly diverting book.
I enjoy this book so much that I bought this to replace the one I thought I lost, then found the first one again
A historical trip through the development of how books have been kept over the ages. It could be dry for those who don't really love books, but fascinating for those of us who do. His other books are equally interesting.
Another excellent addition to my collection of Books about Books!
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